Battlefield 3 has yet to be released officially, and yet it has already turned my gleeful anticipation into frustration and disgust. BF3 is the game that I have been waiting for, a game that delivers a full scale war experience. There is no other game I want to play, but after playing the beta, it has become a source of frustration and disappointment, like many of today's children are to their parents.
Allow me to begin by saying, I'm not a programmer or an expert on net-code. However, I have played 7 DICE online multiplayer shooters for a total of over 2200 hours in the last few years, and that says a few things about me:
(1) my social life is little to non-existent,
(2) I have a lot of free time, and
(3) I have a depth of experience to draw from in my analysis.
It would be presumptuous on my part to tell the decision makers at DICE how to make their game, but what I CAN tell them is whether or not their current system is working and how their product performs from a player's perspective. After all, the end goal of their product is to produce a favorable experience to as many players as possible.
Now to the willfully ignorant BF fan boys whose lame excuse to this issue is, "It's the beta, dude, they're going to fix it," go watch reruns of Bevis and Butthead or Southpark, or better yet, go watch Dragonball Z: Evolution, they're more your speed.
My experience with BF3 after playing both Metro and Caspian maps was that the game has engaging features, amazing graphics and animations only to be ruined by faulty hit detection. Wait, before you say it was lag, allow me to say:
1. I chose servers that were low ping and close proximity to my physical location,
2. My internet connection is A rated on speedtest.net with little or no packet loss and a low ping,
3. My computer specs are higher than the recommended (not minimum) requirements to run BF3.
So, the problem is not my connection or rig, and more than likely the problem is not the server. The problem is how BF3 calculates its collisions. There are several ways faulty hit detection can affect gameplay experience, which I will explain in more detail on my next post.
1. Dying before leaving cover,
2. Dying after hiding behind cover,
3. Dying before being notified of taking damage,
4. Shooting a target and no damage or reticule (x) is displayed or recorded,
5. Shooting a target and damage is displayed but not recorded
6. Having to shoot ahead of or behind a target to register damage
7. Shooting a target and the animation shows a hit, but no damage reticule is displayed
and no damage is recorded.
All of these symptoms occur with far too great of frequency in BF3 and are in desperate need of correction. So far DICE has offered little consulation that they have a remedy in place for launch. The only thing we have seen so far is a mere admission that there is a problem from DICE's creative manager, Lars Gustavsson, when he said, “And we’re tightening a lot of things up, too, like hit detection, which is a big thing for us right now.” (See article for more details).
The fact that there were problems in beta is not what concerns me, nor is it the reason why I cancelled my pre-order. It's DICE's response to the problem and their failure to demonstrate a solution that urks me.
Next post: Client Side vs. Server Side Hit Detection.
No comments:
Post a Comment